


The heartaches and the shocks that flesh is heir to

by BeautifulLife



Series: Kings and Queens [4]
Category: The Selection Series - Kiera Cass
Genre: Bad Decisions, Character Thinks About Suicide, Dark, Discussion of Abortion, Everybody Cries Everybody Lies, F/M, Grimdark, Infidelity, Jealousy, M/M, Murder, Not Happy, Prequel, Secret Relationship, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 06:31:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20810627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulLife/pseuds/BeautifulLife
Summary: Abby Illéa’s funeral suit is cut to emphasize the bulge in her belly. She nestles her hands around it, stares unseeingly at the priest reading the liturgy, wills her head steady under the weight of her crown. Nobody expects a woman in her interesting condition to stand and kneel on cue.If she cries, everyone will think she’s remembering her wedding in this same cathedral, just three years ago. In fact, she’s remembering how everything went wrong.





	The heartaches and the shocks that flesh is heir to

**Author's Note:**

> If you remember the canon backstory of King Justin, Queen Abby, and Porter Schreave, you'll know that any story leading to Justin's funeral is most likely a tragedy. Abby's worst qualities come to the fore, and so do everyone else's. The title is from Hamlet.

Abby Illéa’s funeral suit is cut to emphasize the bulge in her belly. She nestles her hands around it, stares unseeingly at the priest reading the liturgy, wills her head steady under the weight of her crown. Nobody expects a woman in her interesting condition to stand and kneel on cue.

If she cries, everyone will think she’s remembering her wedding in this same cathedral, just three years ago. In fact, she’s remembering how everything went wrong.

*

The afternoon of her first wedding anniversary, she cut short a meeting with the League of Visiting Nurses, pleading headache, to slip back to the royal suite in hope of surprising Justin after he ran out of things to discuss with his councilors.

Her plan for filling the time before dinner and the anniversary ball had involved champagne, rose petals, handcuffs, and a particularly naughty set of bra and panties.

It had _not_ involved following odd noises from Justin’s bed chamber to find him sucking his cousin’s dick.

She did not slam the door. She did not scream. She waited patiently for Porter Schreave to come—sure that he’d seen her and been unperturbed—before she asked the obvious question.

“When did you intend to tell me about this?”

Justin scrambled to his feet, one hand buttoning his pants while the other wipes at his mouth. “As soon as the laws were changed. You know it’s illegal. I needed to change that—”

“Out,” she said to Porter. This wasn’t his fight. It could be, if he’d known Abby was being lied to—but that could wait.

“You could have joined us,” Porter said as he tugged his pants up.

“Thanks ever so much.”

Only after the door closed behind him did she let loose a fraction of her rage. “A full year of _just Abby and Justin alone together,_ and you never told me you had another lover.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“You wouldn’t have understood—”

“I had a right to _know._ This wasn’t supposed to be a political marriage with some nice mare who’d give you sons in return for political capital. This was supposed to be a marriage of love and honesty. How long has this been going on?”

Justin ran his hands through his dark hair. “Since we were eighteen.”

“We got married when you were twenty.”

“I know.”

That was when she threw the champagne bottle at him.

*

Abby locked Justin out of her bedroom for a week. At the end of it, she waited until midnight and went to Porter Schreave’s chamber, with a Plan A and a Plan B, depending what she found there.

Porter answered the door wearing only pajama bottoms. His chest was broader and better toned than Justin’s—but she’d known that before she got married. His pale hair was rumpled—well, he knew he looked best that way.

His bed was empty, other than a stack of books on military strategy.

Abby locked the door behind her, clasped her hands on the back of his neck, and drew his head down for a kiss that she extended until she was dizzy for lack of air.

“Your Majesty,” Porter said.

“Do you moan that when you’re fucking my husband?”

“I’m a quiet type. You saw that.”

“I want you to show me what you’re like in bed.” It occurred to her that she had no Plan C for if he refused, but she was Queen, she was beautiful, and she’d just kissed him senseless.

“Is that a royal command?”

“Does it need to be?”

Porter’s blue eyes were serious. “It’s treason if I seduce the Queen. If she seduces me—”

“Do I have to give a royal command for everything I want you to do with me?”

It turned out that she didn’t. Porter Schreave was creative, perceptive, and blessed with both stamina and self-control. When he was done with her, she was sated to the point of trembling, exhausted as much by release of the rage she’d been storing as by sexual satisfaction.

He rolled over to prop his head on one hand and watch her. “Was that revenge sex?”

“Yes.”

“Justin truly loves you.”

“And I love Justin. Except it turns out he has this half of his heart that I didn’t know was given to you. He promised me total honesty—” She burst into tears, great ugly sobs, and Porter pulled her against his chest and rubbed her back.

“He refused my advice to tell you. I’m sorry. I should have been more persuasive.”

“I don’t think I want to visualize that.”

*

The next night, she left her chamber door unlocked and Justin came to her bed, bearing the lilacs that she loved and a tray with two snifters of whiskey.

She drank, she thanked him, she let him make love to her.

Then she told him what she’d done with Porter Schreave.

When Justin cried, she lay beside him, not touching him, hoping she hadn’t judged wrong and put her neck on the block for treason.

She did not entirely care.

*

The threesome was inevitable, so it was almost a surprise that six months went by before Justin suggested it. For those six months, Abby allowed Justin into her bed once a week—never the same night of the week twice, or he’d develop a schedule with Porter—and slept with Porter whenever she dared, which was less often than she let Justin believe.

The surprise was how her surge of jealousy, once the three of them are in a single bed, was for Porter’s attention to Justin, not Justin’s attention to Porter. She wanted, with a fierce fiery urgency, to have all of Porter’s creativity and empathy focused on _her_.

*

The threesomes cleared some air, though, so she invited, rather than enduring, Justin’s touch when he came to her alone. Seeing him vulnerable and open, in the passion incited by Porter Schreave, reminded her how vulnerable and sweet he had always been with _her_. It wasn’t as different as she thought, which both comforted and excited her.

He still wept when he believed she’d had separate time with Porter, and she still raged when he had. But the making up in between was delicious.

Sometimes she wondered if they might all have been happy if someone had simply _asked_ her, before she married Justin, if this was something she could want.

*

The new routine took them through more than a year. It might have worked forever if Justin hadn’t decided that the wedding of his cousin Antonella of Swendway would be an excellent excuse for a tour of European allies.

Even so—Abby went to the royal wedding, of course, and had sweet sentimental romantic sex with her husband afterward, in a castle that looked like a wedding cake. If ex-King Damon hadn’t declined into his final illness, Justin would have toured Europe with her and Porter.

Justin flew back to Angeles to be at his father’s death bed. Abby and Porter took the opportunity to fuck in every castle in Europe for six weeks.

She’d been a nurse before she became Queen. Of course they used protection. Lower castes believed contraception was impossible, but that was a myth she’d fought to puncture. If she’d known she was pregnant before she came back from Europe—but nobody could be counted on to give the Queen of Illéa a discreet abortion. Nobody.

Once Justin caught her throwing up in the morning, he knew. He made all the right noises about being delighted to become a father, but he had to know it wasn’t his baby. Didn’t he?

*

Abby didn’t decide to kill Justin until the night she poured the poison into his post-sex mug of cocoa.

She’d had the herbal mixture handy for a while. Every herb that caused miscarriage carried the risk of killing the mother. She’d weighed whether to risk it and whether that would betray her secret. Maybe it was best to tough it out and have the poison handy in case Justin had her arrested for treason. The methods of execution for treason were horrifying.

She’d tried falling down stairs. She’d tried falling off a horse. She’d reassured herself that twenty percent of pregnancies ended in miscarriage. This fetus clung to its unwelcome nest in her body with the tenacity of a curse.

She’d drunk more alcohol, which helped nothing at all.

From minute to minute, she watched her husband and didn’t know if he should die or if she should, if she should keep up the lie or trust him with the truth. Maybe he loved Porter so much that he’d accept his cousin’s child as his own heir.

That thought lodged like a rock in her throat and made her whole chest hurt.

Maybe this all would have gone fine if they’d agreed to the rules at the start.

*

Abby arranged a generous bequest for the servant who found Justin dead in his own bed the next morning. It was a horrific trauma to wish on someone innocently doing their job, but even after seeing death in the streets and on the operating table before she was Queen, she couldn’t face lying in bed with him in her room, waiting for his breathing to stop, wondering if there’d be a convulsion or a moan or some plea for mercy.

Everyone said Justin looked like he’d died peacefully in his sleep. She’d never know if he died happy.

*

Two days later, while the funeral was still being prepared, she put on clothes for the first time since the stark, gaunt address to the nation about Justin’s death, and went to find Gregory Illéa in his study, crouched like a wizened spider behind his great desk.

“You’re here to tell me that I don’t need to take on the crown of Illéa again,” he said without looking up.

“Yes, sir.” Abby always struggled for breath around Justin’s grandfather. He seemed to gather all the life in a room to himself and leave the rest as vacuum.

“Is it Justin’s child?”

She lifts her chin a notch. “Yes, sir.”

“There’s still twenty years before the child can rule. If it’s a boy. Don’t tell me you can handle being Regent. You’re an Illéa and a One only by marriage.”

She sat without permission—she was pregnant and a widow, her ankles were shaking, and until the line of succession was cleared up, she technically outranked Gregory Illéa. She folded her hands on her belly and waited.

“Justin was a weak king,” old Gregory said into her silence. “I’d hoped marriage would make a man of him, but it worked little better for him than for my son.”

Abby nodded and waited some more.

“Maybe I was wrong in wanting Damon to marry Grace. His cousin Brenton’s oldest son with that Nicole snippet out of the Eights is twice the man Justin ever became.”

“I’m sorry you think that,” Abby said, and she continued to wait. Every nerve in her body screamed for action. Protest that Justin was a good king, working hard for reform and saddled with councilors chosen by his grandfather. Demand to be allowed to marry Porter. Beg to be allowed to go into a convent, as Queen Grace had once her husband was buried. Anything.

Gregory Illéa was a spider. If she shook his web, she could die.

“Do you think Porter Schreave wants to be King?”

“He was devoted to Justin!” _Did her outrage sound fake? _

“I think he should have wanted it. Porter’s too talented to stand in anyone’s shadow forever.”

_Wait. Wait. Don’t pick up the paperweight from that endless desk and throw it through a window. Wait._

“You’re going to marry Porter Schreave. Under the circumstances, I think a month of state mourning will be sufficient.”

“A month?” Abby hoped she sounded horrified rather than relieved. She’d expected to have to negotiate to not mourn for a year, and she’d counted how many months she’d need to make absolutely sure that Porter was crowned before their child was born.

“The funeral baked meats won’t quite coldly furnish the wedding table. Is that all, Your Majesty? I have work to do.”

*

She had changed back into a white tea gown and cuddled into the big chair in her chamber, drinking tea that tasted like grass and eating grapes, before Porter found her.

His golden hair was combed flat, and his eyes were red from crying.

“I’ve been to see King Gregory,” he said.

“Not King any more—”

“Abby. Do you know what he told me?”

Before she could decide whether the right answer was _yes_ or _no_, Porter fell to his knees and rested his forehead against her knee. “Abby, do you remember your Selection?”

“Nobody forgets their Selection.” She had been in love with both of them, Justin and Porter. But Justin had been the one who understood what it was like to be consumed by duty and public life. Justin had _promised_—

“Great-uncle Gregory says you wanted to be Queen and Justin was collateral damage.”

The rage flared right under her diaphragm, in the same spot as the heartburn she’d been feeling more often lately.

“Your great-uncle would see that as a point in my favor.”

“Did you want to be Queen?”

Pouring her lukewarm tea down the back of Porter’s neck would accomplish none of her goals. The key one was survival, and for survival, she needed power. For her baby, too—having paid for the baby’s life with Justin’s, she was not about to let anyone threaten this child’s path to a crown.

“That’s what the Selection was for,” she said with forced gentleness. “All of us girls had to grapple with what being Queen would mean. We did not have the option of saying no. You do understand that, don’t you?”

He sniffled, which she took to mean that he hadn’t quite grasped that point. When the King—or King-to-be, as Justin had been then—proposed, you had to say _yes._

“The difference was that Justin made me want to say _yes_. He promised… he promised me that we’d be honest together. There’d be space for just Justin and Abby.”

“And then you included Porter, too.” He looked up at her with tears in his reddened eyes. “I’m grateful.”

_You are clueless. You know everything about my body and not one thing about my heart._ In that instant, she outright hated him. The lust she’d wallowed in with him was an insult to her integrity. She should have forgiven Justin and… and…

Justin would not have given up Porter for her.

“Justin was my dearest friend,” Porter was maundering. “There were other women for me, but never another man. He was the great love of my life, and if you hadn’t loved him, too, I wouldn’t be able to face my great-uncle’s plans. He hinted that I killed him, you know. That I’d always wanted to be King, thought myself more qualified than Justin…”

“Did you?” she asked, caring too late if the question was brutal. _Oh, Abby, rein yourself in. This is life or death. _

He rocked back on his heels. “Yes.” The word dropped into the soft carpet like a dud bomb. “I hated myself for it, some days. My father served degenerate King Damon. I asked him once what would have happened if Justin had been a girl and there’d been no other children. He said he would have betrothed me to the princess and made me King, but he’d never take power for himself.”

“How noble of him.”

“I offered to be the Regent for Justin’s child. Great-uncle Gregory said no. He wants me to marry you and be King. You know I love you second only to Justin. We are… comfortable together. Would this be acceptable to you, Abby, after a decent interval?”

She let out the breath she’d held from the beginning of his speech. “Yes.” The relief she expected didn’t come. _If he realizes I killed Justin, he will never forgive me._ _But he can’t have me killed as a traitor, not without revealing secrets that will turn the people against him._ “Yes, Porter, I will marry you and be your Queen.”

*

Abby made the briefest possible appearance at the lying-in-state that evening. Her black gown swirled from a high neck to her ankles, raising more questions about her figure than it answered—the opposite of the sparkly little dresses she’d worn as one of the Select. Her widow’s veil was held in place by the light crown she’d preferred for balls and afternoon teas.

On the limousine ride to the cathedral, she was stuck between former-King Gregory, busy with his endless paperwork, and Queen-Mother Grace, brought out of the convent for this occasion but still in her snowy white petitioner's robes and wimple. Abby had rehearsed half a dozen polite phrases for the mother of the man she’d murdered—who had, after all, been her mentor in her first years of queenship—but all Grace said was: “We must be strong for one another.”

Lady Schreave, sitting across from her oldest friend, took the Queen-Mother’s hand, and they whispered together for the rest of the ride. Porter and his father discussed military allotments. Abby tried not to scream.

All she had to do was let Gregory Illéa escort her up the endless aisle to where Justin’s coffin lay in front of the altar, surrounded by candles and circled by a stream of mourners from every caste of Angeles. The treble chant of the choir was louder than the camera shutters or the questions shouted by the press—there was that.

She held her chin up the way Grace—no, the way Nicole Schreave had taught her, it was always Nicole who knew the tiny details of court demeanor—and climbed the steps to stand beside her husband’s body.

Justin looked young. _No, not young—open. Relaxed. The way he looked when I watched him sleep, when we were first married, when it was just Justin and Abby, as far as I knew._

Abby peeled off her gloves to stroke one finger along his cheek. It was warm from the heat of the candles, but his flesh had the impersonal feel of an amputated limb. The tears flowing down her cheeks had that same feel—like being caught in a downpour, where the wind and rain don’t care if you’re in their way. _Justin and Abby._

_Justin and Porter._

_Porter and Abby._

“Porter told you to _ask_ me, right at the beginning,” she whispered. “He loves you. I loved you.” Something cracked in her chest, and the part of her that _did_ love him, despite the betrayals on both sides, pushed giant sobs up through her chest, until she fell to her knees with her forehead against the coffin, crown tumbling into the satin lining to rest against Justin’s chest, crying ugly tears that Lady Schreave should have scolded her for.

*

“You’re the darling of the nation again,” Lady Schreave said at breakfast on the day of Justin’s funeral.

Abby had forced herself to join the royal family in the private dining room, where all the pale pink chairs have been covered in black. She owed this much to the Queen-Mother.

There, on the television screen, was the film of her breaking down over Justin’s coffin. The sight of it curdled the peaceful inner emptiness that her tearing sobs had left behind. “I’m sorry,” she said, because throwing her coffee cup through the screen would be rude.

“I told Nicole you did exactly the right thing,” Queen-Mother Grace said. “It wasn’t strictly proper, but you have good instincts. You have the makings of a great Queen, Abby. We all want you to be happy with Porter.”

_If I had any instincts left at all, I’d saw through my wrists with a butter knife._ “Thank you,” Abby murmured. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to pray in my room until we’re ready to leave for the funeral.”

Prayer was the wrong excuse: the Queen-Mother was more than ready to pray with her, and where Grace went, Lady Schreave came, too. Maybe she was better off with company after all. If she was obediently saying the rosary with Justin’s mother, she couldn’t throw herself from a window.

*

Her funeral suit was cut to emphasize the bulge in her belly. Abby let her maids apply her make-up—enough to look human on camera, not so much that she would seem to care about how she looked on camera. Her widow’s veil was draped over her head, followed by the crown that she wore only on state occasions.

In the interval when Lady Schreave and the Queen-Mother were fussing with their coronets, she snuck a tot of bourbon from the flask concealed beneath black-bordered handkerchiefs in her purse.

Somehow—she didn’t really care, people were paid to make sense of these things—the order of precedence led to Porter Schreave escorting her to the royal pew. He was endlessly gentle, honoring his love for Justin through Justin’s wife and Justin’s child. Abby was simultaneously grateful and filled with a smoldering jealousy that she would always, _always _be second to Justin with Porter.

And it would be four of them forever now: Porter, Abby, the baby, and the ghost of Justin Illéa.

Abby nestled her hands around her baby bump, staring unseeingly at the priest reading the liturgy, wills her head steady under the weight of her crown. Nobody could expect a woman in her interesting condition to stand and kneel on cue.

If she cried, everyone would think she was remembering her wedding in this same cathedral, just three years ago.

In fact, she was remembering how everything went wrong


End file.
